Marks
by Spider and the Fly
Summary: Johnlock, soulmate! verse.
1. Chapter 1

Sherlock had always had his Marks, indicating that the other person was older than him. They were a deep velvet, almost fuzzy-looking. They curved sensually around his chest, right above the sharp ridges of his collarbone, and just below the slanting tilt of his shoulders. It sat there like someone had taken an ink pen and just written it on his skin. _JHW_.

He teased Mycroft mercilessly about his own Marks: _GL_. "How boring," he'd sniff. "Guess yours doesn't have a middle name. What an interesting, yet easy, search."

He didn't doubt the fact that his Marks were for a woman. His Mummy's had been for Father, and his father's had been for Mummy. Mycroft didn't say anything; he just bought gloves to cover the Marks on his knockles.

Sherlock looked hard for his Mate, the person whose name matched the Marks on his collar, and eventually, he found a woman named Jennifer Holly Waldorf. She was hideously boring and dreadfully predictable. The Marks on both of them stayed ink-pen black, and her's didn't even match his: her Marks read "_RMO_". Nevertheless, they parted amiably, and he watched her for a while until she found her Mate working as a barista in her favorite coffee shop.

Mycroft didn't share his sentiment. He didn't search, but if he found someone anyway, bearing the initials of his Mate, then he'd watch them from afar until determining that they didn't have his initials as their Marks. They never did.

Sherlock stopped trying to find his Mate. He focused instead on mysteries and dead bodies. They didn't have Marks, but he'd have felt it if they'd been his. The Marks would have paled and faded away, bringing a jerk of pain with them. He checked his almost obsessively, making sure it hadn't disappeared. (He know if it did, of course, but still.)

he only felt that painful jolt once, but when he checked his Marks (in a bathroom; he was at a crime scene and Lestrade was looking at him with pity and horror), it was still there. _A near-death experience_, he realized, and considered researching recent victims of near-death experiences, but then didn't. He didn't care.

He'd forgotten about it so much, deleted the experience so completely, that when Mike Stamford introduced an old friend, John Watson, to him, the letters didn't even register. He glances up, searches for an obvious sign of Marks, and doesn't find them.

"My work acquaintance, Sherlock Holmes." Mike says proudly. John's face isn't showing any recognition, but that isn't surprising; that isn't his whole name.

He asks for Mike's phone, knowing he won't have it and John will.

And when he has it, he asks:

"Afghanistan or Iraq?"


	2. Chapter 2

John isn't quite sure what to make of this eccentric (and extremely giddy) man. He wore high-collar shirts and coats, implying that his Marks were on his neck, and that he didn't want them seen. Not strange; many people were private about that kind of thing. It did make him curious, though. Had Sherlock found his Mate and simply didn't like them? Or was he as lonely as he seemed?

They'd barely been in the cab ten minutes before Sherlock Holmes had spouted almost his entire history in front of a cabby (_that _didn't make him anxious at _all_) and looked as if he was waiting for a response. John was instantly struck with the feeling that this strange, ridiculously-happy-over-a-string-of-murders man was, quite frankly, adorable. And John simply said, "Brilliant," without correcting him about Harry and Clara because people tended to get touchy about that sort of thing, the "same-sex relationship".

John hasn't checked his Marks since meeting Sherlock, which has to be a new record. In the army, he checked them whenever he had the chance, sure that the war's pain had dulled the painful sensation and he'd miss the moment his Mate perished on a battlefield or in a civilian area. His Mate was five years younger than him; he'd panicked when he was four and everyone else had them but his forty-year-old teacher, who'd lost hers in a car accident seven years ago. She'd had nothing but a pale blemish on her thigh from it, which she hid with knee-high socks and long, ankle-length skirts. Nobody likes being reminded of a loss so large. He'd cried when he found his Marks, stretched across his back like a rainbow. Such long ones, too. Surely the search would be easy? It was in English, so it couldn't be anyone _too _foreign, right? _WSSH_, each letter swirled and twisting like angry vines on an old brick wall.

Maybe he'd stay awhile. This might prove to be interesting after all, and it _had _already gotten him out of him funk…


	3. Chapter 3

The cabbie was the murderer. He'd taken them all for a ride, and now he had Sherlock and his ridiculous need to prove things, and John was scared for the first time since Afghanistan. This time, though, he wasn't enjoying the rush that came with it. He was frantically chasing Sherlock and a killer with nothing but the phone GPS…and his gun.

The bullet through the window was shocking to Sherlock mentally, but his body was already moving along, and he gratefully did the mental calculations, peering out the window, before kneeling before the man prone on the floor, dying. He growls at the man, steps deliberately on his shoulder in an attempt to get an answer to the question ("Was I right?"), but the man on the floor is in too much pain to answer. Eventually, he dies, and Sherlock will never know the answer.

He almost reveals John's involvement in the shot, before dismissing it awkwardly as shock to Lestrade. He thinks, somewhere in the back of his head, that the shot must have ridden his sleeve up, and the Marks would have been fully visible. The dead man would've known it, if he'd looked. He banishes the thought and walks over to John.

(He keeps the shock blanket; it's rather warm. Plus, who knows when he might go into shock again and require the blanket?)


	4. Chapter 4

**Sorry I haven't worked on this in a while… it's been a little hectic and I totally forgot all about this! My bad!**

**I'll be updating the daemon!verse after this, so if you've been paying attention to that, it's happening. **

**I'm really bad at updating, so you guys have to yell at me, okay? If you want to see something continued, get angry! Shout at me! I want to continue stuff but I'm lazy, and if I don't get an idea on my own I'll just neglect the story and that's sad. My beta's helping me with this, though! (Her name's Clara Prinn, and she's really nice and helpful. ****J****)**

**I've read back over my stuff from the beginning, and I'd like to think I've made real progress in my writing. Makes me all bashful… *rubs head and blushes***

**Anyway, I've been rambling! Continuing on!**

John's exasperated. Sherlock refuses to take cases, saying they're "boring" and solving them on the spot (which drives John up a wall, really). Finally, John's forced to take a look at the growing pile of bills in need of payment and decide that one of them has to get a job, and unless someone targets something interesting or commits a crime in an interesting way, it's not going to be Sherlock. So he tells Sherlock as much and applies at the local hospital.

Sherlock throws a fit before calming down (and John's totally not suspicious of _that_, not at all) and then grabs a letter off the table, opens it, and declares that they are going to the bank. John is okay with this. He is. Sherlock is leaving the house! This is cause for a party, and the second John thinks this, he smacks his forehead with an open palm. Goodness, the levels he has sunk to for this man.

They visit a man whom Sherlock lies to, blatantly, and whom John must hold himself back bodily from smacking some respect and sense into (it's a painful sort of restraint). This, however, doesn't stop him from being amazed with Sherlock's wit and deductive skill yet again, and he finds himself calling it wonderful.

This is not before Sherlock plays a game of duck and cover between the desks, earning himself dumbfounded looks (which he ignores, of course) and leaving John to snatch the check out of the banker's hand. "Bills and such, you know."

John is ready for conventional work to begin, or at least for Sherlock to stop making himself look like a crazy dodo in public. Either one's fine, really.

**Sorry this is sort of rushed, I was in a hurry. Promise to do better on the next chapters of this and the daemon AU. Please don't throw tomatoes?**


End file.
